Whitman man gets 20 to 40 years in prison for OUI

A Vermont prosecutor said a history of 45 criminal convictions was likely a factor in a judge’s decision to sentence a Whitman man to 20 to 40 years in prison for driving drunk in 2010.

A Vermont prosecutor said a history of 45 criminal convictions was likely a factor in a judge’s decision to sentence a Whitman man to 20 to 40 years in prison for driving drunk in 2010.

Darrell F. Day, 51, was arrested Oct. 16, 2010, after crashing his car into another vehicle on North Branch Street in Bennington while driving drunk and then attempting to elude police, according to a story in Thursday’s Rutland Herald. Police said a 10-year-old and 6-year-old twins were inside the other vehicle.

The incident resulted in five charges, including drunken driving and simple assault.

According to the Herald, Robert Plunkett, the deputy Bennington County state’s attorney who prosecuted Day, said he believes the unusually serious sentence was at least in part because Day had 45 criminal convictions, 14 of them felonies.

At the time of his arrest, Day was slated to appear in a Massachusetts court on another drunken driving charge.

Day’s police record in Massachusetts goes back to at least 1992. In July of that year, he was arrested at gunpoint in the Purity shopping center on South Franklin Street in Holbrook on charges he shot a man at a Greenfield bar in February 1992.

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